Our NASA Award Winning Team
The Miles Space executive team has decades of experience leading engineering groups, including 15 years of dedicated research and development of plasma thrusters, and 25 years of software development, and has even loaned expertise to “Part Time Scientists“, a Lunar X-Prize team.
Under the experienced leadership of our executive team, our group of expert leaders and engineers have come together for one purpose: to create technological excellence.
Our original technology was created for the NASA CubeQuest Challenge, where it won prizes in every Ground Tournament. The satellite is on track to be launched on the Artemis mission, and poised to break competitive records.
Chief Technology Officer Wes Faler
President of Fluid & Reason where he invented the ConstantQ thruster. Chief Software Engineer for Lunar X-Prize team Part Time Scientists. Founder of Team Miles (NASA), winners of the NASA CubeQuest Challenge.
Chief Operations Officer Brad Berkson
Former United States Department of Defense Director, Program Analysis and Evaluation, serving under both the Bush Administration and Obama Administration. He also served as the Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness, and led Secretary of Defense Robert Gates" Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance (ISR) Task Force. He was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 2009. Brad received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa and a Master’s Degree from Harvard Business School.
Our Roots
Team Miles, a collection of citizen inventors, came together to compete in the Cube Quest Challenge. Their goal was to develop a small spacecraft that would journey into deep space to demonstrate newly developed navigation, propulsion, and communications technology. The mission goals are to demonstrate the ability to conduct orbital maneuvers, navigate to a target given limited information, and demonstrate robust communications with a ground station from deep space. We will be refining and implementing several new technologies including plasma thrusters, a failsafe computing cluster, and a revolutionary communications strategy.
As part of accomplishing these goals, team miles will compete for a number of prizes offered in the NASA CubeQuest Challenge. By leveraging these competitive advantages, we believe we are uniquely qualified to earn deep space communications prizes. Supported by Miles Space, Team Miles was selected by NASA as one of three teams qualified to launch on the inaugural SLS mission as a secondary payload (now known as Artemis).
The Challenge
According to NASA, the Cube Quest Challenge is designed to foster innovations in small spacecraft propulsion and communications techniques. Teams compete to win up to a total of $1,500,000 in cash prizes by meeting or exceeding technical objectives for communication from at least 4,000,000 kilometers from Earth during the Deep Space Derby. Up to a total of $3,000,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to and shared between registered Competitor Teams that are able to meet or exceed technical objectives for propulsion and communication from lunar orbit during the Lunar Derby.
A series of four Ground Tournaments were conducted prior to both the Deep Space Derby and Lunar Derby. Team Miles earned the maximum cash prize in all four ground tournaments and secured two first place finishes along the way. With their selection by NASA to ride on the SLS to the Moon (an estimated $2.5M value), Team Miles is now in the build phase for their spacecraft with plans to deliver a completed craft in 2018 for final integration into the deployer along with 12 other manifested payloads.
The Results
Team Miles is a four-time winner in the NASA CubeQuest Challenge!
GT1 – Team Miles Earns First Place in NASA Challenge.
GT2 – Team Miles wins $30K in CubeQuest Challenge.
GT3 – Team Miles Earns First Place in Ground Tournament 3.
Our cubesat launches with NASA past the moon in its journey towards Mars on the upcoming SLS EM-1 mission!
